Los Angeles (L.A.), officially the City of Los Angeles, is the largest city in California, in the United States. There are many ethnicities of people living in the city, and over 18 million people in the L.A. Los Angeles is the city with the second biggest population in the United States after New York, overtaking Chicago in the 1970s. There are two providers of heavy rail transportation in the region, Amtrak and Metrolink. Amtrak provides service to San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and points in between on the Pacific Surfliner.

• For those meals when you can’t decide, Grand Central Market downtown has a little bit of everything.
• The museum’s immersive Oscars Experience transports you to the Dolby Theatre stage – after the standing ovation, you give your “thank you” speech with an Academy Award in hand.
• Stop and smell the flowers at the rest of the city’s best botanical gardens.
• The Los Angeles Metro and other regional agencies provide a comprehensive bus system that covers Los Angeles County.
• LA Metro also operates an extensive bus system with 117 routes,82 operates a microtransit service in eight zones, and funds independent transit operators throughout Los Angeles County such as Foothill Transit, Long Beach Transit, Santa Monica Big Blue Bus, and LADOT Transit.
• Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry, with acoustics by Yasuhisa Toyota, the magnificent venue has received worldwide praise from critics and concertgoers alike for its stunning architecture and extraordinary sound.
• Orange Coast or South Coast area is defined instead as consisting of some or all of the cities lining the coast.

Los Angeles: Family-Friendly Vacation Ideas

Irvine is an exception, as it is a center of employment and is ethnically diverse. A growing alternative dividing marker between north and south is the El Toro Y interchange. Orange Coast or South Coast area is defined instead as consisting of some or all of the cities lining the coast. Many cities adjacent to Los Angeles also have their own daily newspapers whose coverage and availability overlap with certain Los Angeles neighborhoods. Examples include The Daily Breeze (serving the South Bay), and The Long Beach Press-Telegram. The primary airport serving the LA metro area is Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), one of the busiest airports in the United States.
Los Angeles has a diverse economy with a broad range of industries. Despite a steep exodus of film and television production since the COVID-19 pandemic,21 Los Angeles is still one of the largest hubs of American film production,2223 the world’s largest by revenue; the city is an important site in the history of film. Los Angeles hosted the Summer Olympics in 1932 and 1984, and will also host in 2028.

Heli-Cool: Henry’s Sky-High View of California

Attend a concert by the acclaimed LA Phil and experience classical music as it was meant to be heard. We’ve all dreamed of being Julia Roberts shopping on Rodeo Drive, but very few of us could actually afford to shop in the designer boutiques and flagship stores seen in the film Pretty Woman. Along the $200-million ersatz European cobbled walkway Two Rodeo, browsing tourists mingle with serious spenders. Oh and if you’re still after the Pretty Woman experience, duck into the Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel where Roberts stays in the film, which boasts a luxe spa and a steakhouse by Wolfgang Puck. Stop and smell the flowers at the rest of the city’s best botanical gardens.
The collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, or LACMA, are housed in a cluster of buildings, with a modern and contemporary-art-filled west campus that opened 2008 and a single-building redesign due to open in 2026 on the eastern half. The focal point is its grand entrance, which includes Chris Burden’s photogenic installation Urban Light. LACMA shares a park with the La Brea Tar Pits and sits just across the street from the Petersen Automotive Museum and Craft Contemporary, and next to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (an excellent celebration of cinema from the folks who hand out the Oscars). From the Space Shuttle Endeavour at the California Science Center to a trio of T. Along a three-block stretch known as Museum Row on Wilshire Boulevard, visitors can walk to four of these cultural institutions, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. After snapping an obligatory photo standing among the Urban Light exhibit’s 202 antique street lamps, take a step back in time by checking out Ice Age fossils and still-bubbling excavation sites at La Brea Tar Pits & Museum.

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• It is very rare for temperatures to go below freezing near the coast but can occur further inland.
• Most tourists in Los Angeles come from Mexico, Canada, China, Australia, Japan, UK, South Korea, Germany, France, Scandinavia, the Middle East and India.24 They come to visit places such as the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Hollywood Sign.
• The northern part of the county, however, remains largely undeveloped and is mostly within the Los Padres National Forest.
• To the north, Interstate 15 crosses desolate desert landscape after passing Barstow, linking Greater Los Angeles with Las Vegas, with Baker being the only significant outpost along the route.
• Los Angeles is the entertainment capital of the world, and for film fans the ultimate experience is a behind-the-scenes tour of a working studio.
• Some military aircraft are also made there, as well as spacecraft.

At Row DTLA, where you can find everything from vegan mushroom sandwiches at Champignon Eats to garlic noodz and truffle fries at Lobsterdamus. Critics refer to it either as a laid-back “la-la land” or, conversely, as a place reeling from earthquakes, fire, smog, gang warfare, and riots. The city’s defenders admire its mild climate and geographic variety. They claim that its major social problems are similar to those of all big cities and are perhaps even less severe there than elsewhere. In fact, some observers regard it as the most modern and quintessential American city.

Art and literature

Nearby, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is a must for learning about the artists who bring stories to life on the big screen. Sprawling across 32 acres downtown, the aforementioned Row DTLA is a century-old industrial warehouse complex turned creative mecca. Browse a collection of boutiques packed with home goods, under-the-radar apparel brands, and vintage treasures. For big-name designers, The Grove’s open-air shopping plaza offers clothing and beauty wares from Aritzia, Sandro, Charlotte Tilbury, Lululemon, and more. Take a free trolley ride on the 1950s-era streetcar to The Original Farmers Market, where there are more than 100 gourmet grocers, souvenir stands, bookstores, jewelry shops, and other businesses open seven days a week.

The stainless-steel landmark is part of The Music Center campus, one of the largest performing arts centers in the United States. Weekend excursions revisit L.A.’s storied past at landmarks such as the Bradbury Building and Angels Flight railway, both featured on the TV show Bosch, among others. If sports are more your speed, Dodger Stadium in the hilly Echo Park neighborhood overlooks downtown, and nearby hiking trails and bike paths offer an outdoor escape in adjacent Elysian Park.

The 20 best places to visit in L.A.: Where to go when you arrive

Anchored by the Japanese American National Museum, the Little Tokyo neighborhood is the largest of the three official Japantowns in the U.S. (the other two are in San Francsico and San Jose). For those arriving by train, Olvera Street is just steps from Union Station’s front doors. The marketplace is an essential part of the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument—the birthplace of Los Angeles and home to the city’s oldest building, the Avila Adobe.
The Inland Empire, consisting of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, contains fast-growing suburbs of the region, with a large to majority percentage of the working population commuting to either Los Angeles or Orange Counties for work. Originally an important center for citrus production, the region became an important industrial area by the early 20th century.444546 The Inland Empire also became a key transportation center following the completion of Route 66, and later Interstate 10. Despite being primarily suburban, the Inland Empire is also home to important warehousing, shipping, logistics and retail industries, centered on the subregion’s major cities of Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario. The Greater Los Angeles CSA is the third-largest economic center in the world, after Greater Tokyo and the New York-Newark-Bridgeport CSA. Orange County is sometimes figuratively divided into “North County” and “South County”, with aphrodite casino North Orange County including cities such as Anaheim, Fullerton, and Santa Ana, and is the older, more ethnically diverse and more densely built-up area both geographically and culturally closer to Los Angeles. South County, defined variously as beginning with either Costa Mesa42 or Irvine43 and includes cities to the east and south such as Laguna Beach, Mission Viejo, Newport Beach, and San Clemente, is more residential, affluent, recently developed, and has a mostly white population.
Venice Beach has long made its case as the bohemian epicenter of California, and while the area gets plenty of mainstream tourists, it still boldly embraces its eccentric spirit—for better or worse. Abbot Kinney has transformed into a high-end ’hood over recent years, but the gritty boardwalk is still a, let’s say, unique place for people watching, with street “performers,” skateboarders and body builders all making their presence known (if you’re simply after a picturesque stretch of beach, we suggest venturing to Santa Monica or Malibu instead). Grab lunch at the Fig Tree before browsing the shelves at Small World Books. With so many world-famous sites and attractions to visit, deciding on the best things to do in Los Angeles can be a bewildering task. If it’s your first visit, you may be inclined to beeline it to Hollywood—but, in addition to probably walking away a bit disappointed, you’d be missing out on all of L.A.’s essential museums. Or you might have your heart set on getting star-struck in Beverly Hills—but, in addition to probably walking away a bit more broke, you’d be overlooking all of the remarkable restaurants farther to the east.
Whether it’s visiting a quiet museum, or attending a boisterous ball game, there are always things to do, interesting attractions and exciting events and places to go in LA.  Read on for ten iconic “must see” places in Los Angeles. If you’re in SoCal to take in as much culture as possible, you’ll be spoiled for choice at San Marino’s three-in-one attraction, the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens. A truly one-of-a-kind destination, it’s home to an impressive art gallery, a substantially stocked library (with a Gutenberg Bible) and elaborately themed botanical gardens. The hilly Japanese garden, beautifully designed Chinese garden and cacti-filled desert garden are among our favorites.